ABSTRACT
Agriculture was by far the most important economic activity in our period, so changes in the way it was practised and organised may have been crucial in driving the development of social, political, and commercial life. The classic Roman villa was worked by slaves who lived in one or more barrack-blocks, and who were maintained by the lord of the villa with food raised on the land and given to them for their consumption. They in turn undertook the agricultural work on the villa, raising food chiefly for their lord's consumption. Eastern Brittany was a deeply Celtic area, on the fringes of Roman imperial control, just as it was only imperfectly brought under the rule of the Carolingian kings. The area in Catalonia covered by the archives of Urgell Cathedral and other churches was not peripheral geographically to the Roman world, but its geography made it marginal for agriculture.
